: : : : Adding the very American "baby" to the Spanish farewell "hasta la vista," spoken in his comic-operetta Austrian accent, made thiis phrase one of Arnold Schwartzenegger's carefully-scripted catch phrases from one of his tiresome movies. That is, it's a jokey turn of phrase (followed by extreme violence) in a simple formula that can be grasped by slack-jawed teenage boys. He's bidding farewell to someone (or some thing, or some alien) that he's about to blast to smithereens. this is what passes for wit in America, and gets one elected to high office. Sign.

: : : Interestingly, The Economist (Dec. 18, 2004) supports changing the Constitution so that Schwarzenegger can run for the presidency in 2008. Of course, this does not mean that The Economist would support him.

: : Another reference translates it: See you later. "Le Mot Juste," edited by John Buchanan-Brown.

: Besides being a tag line from the 1991 movie "Terminator 2: Judgement Day" (or "T2" for short), "Hasta la Vista, Baby" is an album by the Irish rock supergroup U2, released in 2000. If you've seen any NFL games this year, you've seen the Apple iPod commercial where U2's lead singer Bono counts off in [email protected], but after "tres" he shouts "catorce" instead of "cuatro" for some reason. Guess they got the album title from the Arnie movie!

"Hasta la vista" literally means "until the (next) seeing" and is echoed in the French "au revoir". "See you later" is a good translation, as would be "till next time".

Being an erstwhile U2 fan (prior to Bono deciding he was the second messiah and disappearing up himself), I can add that "Hasta La Vista, Baby" was a live album recorded at a Mexico City concert. It's pretty appalling, being released with much material from this self-proctological period and ranks right down there with "Achtung Baby", "Zooropa" and "Pop". "All That You Can't Leave Behind" and "How To Dismatle A Nuclear Bomb" show signs of improvement, but gone are the glory days of "Boy", "War and "The Joshua Tree".